Croanian
=Setting= Croanian is a Conlang (obviously) still in construction. It's a Romance language, closely resembling Latin and Italian. Some constructions are clearly derived from either these two, French or Spanish - this because it would have been spoken in the area of North-Spain/South-France/West-Italy. =Basic Grammar= The alphabet and pronunciation The Croanian alphabet consists out of 27 characters: Aa Bb Cc Cs Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qu Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Xx Yy Zz Zh Ææ Note: The characters cs, qu, zh 'and 'æ make a different sound than the single letters C, Z, A and E. The Q never occurs on its own, and the æ can also be written as ae. Use The IPA Rostov-na-don 19:20, July 25, 2010 (UTC) An overview of the nouns-system Gender, number and case Croanian nouns can have one (sometimes multiple) of the following three genders: Masculine / Feminine / Neuter. Furthermore, a noun is inflected by number (Singular / Plural) and case: Nominative / Genitive / Dative / Accusative. Note that all these genders, numbers and cases are reflected in the Suffix which is added to the noun stem. If we'd take a look at one stem which occurs in all three genders, Bambin-''', the possibilities add up to an overwhelming 3 × 2 × 4 = 24 forms for just one single word! Just to show you what all the different forms look like, here's a table: '''Singular : Plural : Hopefully you see a clear pattern in these declensions for each form: |Stem| + |Gender/Number-related vowel| + |Gender suffix|. The gender/number-related vowels are the following: : And the case suffixes look like this: : The cases work exactly the same as in German: Nominative '= subject; '''Genitive = possession or relation; Dative '''= indirect object; '''Accusative = direct object'' The tranlations of the forms of bambin-'' strongly depends on the case and gender. Generally, '''bambino' would translate to little boy, bambina to little girl and bambinu to little child. Other Noun Forms Some nouns can have a different suffix in the nom.sing., such as Pony, Museus ''and ''Templon museum and temple, resp. The declension for these 'other' nouns looks like this: Singular : Plural : An overview of the verbs system General Form Verbs in Croanian have a very strict pattern in showing what/who is the object and in which tense the verb is. This is done by means of suffixes, small parts (1 or two characters) which are added to the stem of a verb. The general form for every verb is as follows: Verb Stem + Tense suffix(es) + Personal Suffix With the tense suffixes always being put in the following order: Past - Future - Perfect (To indicate a present simple, no tense suffix is used) Personal Pronouns The personal pronouns are rarely used in Croanian as an object, but they do exist: : Note that the 'it' and 'they (neut.)' forms are alike in Croanian, but the difference is clearly visible in the conjugated verb. Also note that the form 'Ellu' is almost never used, to translate sentences as "It is beautiful", 'it' is almost always omitted. Personal Suffixes Sounding rather fancy, the 'personal suffixes' are actually quite dull. Where English uses personal pronouns to indicate the object of a sentence ("They throw the ball."), Croanian does this by adding one or two characters to the verb. In the first, most simple tense - the present simple - they're simply added to the verb stem. Here's a table of all suffixes: : So, let's just take a random verb, and we'll see what we'll get! Marsere walk : The Infinitive As you prbably noticed, the stem of Marsere is formed by removing the suffix ''-ere'' from the stem. But, the infinitive can also take a different form, as with the verb Vivire live. This verb has the suffix ''-ire'', which doesn't matter much at this moment. (The difference between -ere/-ire matters only in the past perfect and the conjunctive mood) The infinitive is furthermore used in the same way as English, so in Croanian it is possible to say "I want to walk" - "Vuolo marsere". Irregular Verbs (Present Tense) Of course, some verbs are irregular in Croanian. There are 7 really irregular verbs, and a handful of others which don't exactly follow the normal pattern, but aren't really irregular either. These seven verbs are: Essere be / Allere go Dovire have to / Podire be able to / Volire want Fassere do / Savvere know And they are conjugated as follows: : =Dictionary= Human-describing words #bambino = little boy #bambina = little girl #bambinu = little child #garcsono = boy #filiia = girl (Note the pronunciation of Filiia: /fi-lley-jah/) #homo = man #fema = woman #senioro = mister #seniora = miss #viexo = old man #viexa = old woman #persono = someone #qualquuno = anyone ('' Pronounced: /kwahl-kwoonoh/)'' Random Verbs #Essere = To be #Allere = To go #Dovire = To have got to (As in: I've got to go now) #Podire = To be able to (As in: I'm able to do this / I can do this) #Volire = To want #Fassere = To do (Used for many expressions, e.g. to express time and weather) #Savvere = To know #Marsere = To walk #Nagere = To swim #Naistrere = To be born #Mangere = To eat #Vivire = To live #Venire = To come #Vicire = To win / conquer #Audire = To hear Numbers Please note that, in Croanian, numbers have to change their common suffix (-e) to the appropriate gender and number of the noun they belong to! : =Example text= ... Category:Languages